Violent Traitors in Violet - A 6mm Project Begins

I did it again. I started a new system. Legions Imperialis has caught my eye ever since it came out but I had never taken the plunge. There is something appealing to me about looking down at a battlefield with a birds eye view. I feel like a commander, not a warrior in the thick of combat. Sitting in a commander's chair with datascreens and holograms, receiving news from the front. That's the idea anyways. I haven't tested the game out yet. I decided to go with Traitors this time - Emperor's children. My main army in 28mm scale is Ultramarines so a bit of a change was needed. Plus purple is my favorite colour! Also a tip: I don't know if it was chance but my pot of Xerces purple had absolutely crap coverage. More proof that switching to vallejo is the right call

Paints used: screamer pink/macragge blue (temporary until I can find a better purple) leadbelcher titanium white (AK) Greedy gold (AP) drybrush with genestealer purple and use 3:1 ratio of darktone to quickshade medium. Then clean up white and do sparing highlight on infantry with genestealer purple

Dreadnought and Friends

This week I took advantage of a brief lull after my essay and lab test to paint up some Ultramarines for Heresy. First up is a Centurion I converted from a mk-IV body. Lightning claw and chainsword is not a legal loadout as I understand it but at the time I thought it was a good idea. Left shoulder pauldron is fron the ultramarines upgrade set and the backpack is magnetized for a jumpack (which is yet to be painted). I also added a greenstuff cape to cement the officer look.

And yes, purity seals. Those well versed in the lore of the Horus Heresy will know that there were none in the 31st millenium. I had originally built this model for 40k and was experimenting with green stuff at the time. I had done basecoats on this batch in a hurry and hadn't noticed them untill it was too late. Ah well. This is a Praetor that uses a model from the old resin masters of the chapter set. I swapped out the head for a mk-vi one so it would match the infantry. The base was elevated with some scrap wood tiles.

The Champion was made from a Mk4 body with the front torso, head, sword and shoulder from the upgrade sprue. The lightning claw arm was made from a terminator power fist with an added claw from the mk6 set. The other shoulder is from a custodes set and the backpack icon is from a 28mm imperial roman standard.

These Mk 6 marines were done as closely as possible to the batch I did a couple years back. That is building up shadow and highlight primarily theough airbrush for a more subtle look. Prussian blue from vallejo was used here for the base colour. White was added to for highlight and drakenhoff nightshade for shadow. Afterward drakenhoff was selectivly applied to recesses and panel lines. I simulated scratches in the armour with black lines, adding highlight beneath them. The only parts of the model that were edge highlighted are some of the backpack, knees and shoulders.

I also painted some mkiv I had laying around from the set I used to make the Champion and centurion. These given extra height with greenstuff in the neck and torso joints.

The Contemptor Dreadnought has nearly all the weapons magnetized sans the conversion beamer and volkite. The base was constructed out of foam, wood and brass rod.

Finally, I rebased Sicarius and an old terminator captain I had laying around. The original banner piece broke off (I blame my cat), so I used a nuncio-vox from the mk6 box

I'm fairly happy with how these turned out. Next up for the army is repairing a broken terminator captain and a land raider and repainting a rhino. Unfortunatly, heresy is a large scale game, so I have some work ahead of me to do a full army. I'm planning on adding 2 more predators and a vindicator laser destroyer to fill up an armour detatchment and repainting some invictarii that were trashed by the previous owner. Prehaps I can even resurrect the Primarch himself who was recovered from depths of facebook marketplace.

Basic Impetus 2: First impressions

    A few years ago I went on a quest to find the best set of ancients rules. The first I tried was Clash of Spears, which I found at my local game shop. It’s a nice skirmish set with interesting rules for disorder and changing formations but it didn’t have the mass battle feeling I had gotten from playing Rome: Total War II. Around the same time I found DBA 3.0. It promised to be a simulation that could play out in around an hour. It had issues... Namely restrictive basing requirements, a rock-paper scissors resolution style and an archaic writing style that would make my English professor cry.

     Anyhow, I've had Basic Impetus sitting around as a pdf in my laptop for over a year now. Only this week did I actually put in the time to learn how to play. The rules are confusing in some areas. Specifically  for multiple combats, where there is so much room for interpretation that even the forums didn't solve my issues.A vast array of army lists are included with the book that allow you to run games with a relatively small number of models.They have a standard template with a few options like, "switch one light foot for one crossbow".Games close in about 2 hours from start and I suspect that could be brought to 1 1/2 hours if players are experienced.

Roman and Pyrrhic lines clash under the gaze of the God of war (in his cat form)

    Turn order is I-go you-go with a bit of a twist. In each round both players take one turn but priority is determined with a roll-off. This means that a player can take 2 turns consecutively. While players activate all of their units before the next player goes, engagement is kept due to a dynamic combat system. In Impetus both units roll dice simultaneously, with the charging unit getting an impetus bonus. The unit that takes more losses makes a retreat roll and can be pursued. Interestingly, if contact is made again, the whole combat restarts. This means that once combat begins, it's explosive and holes can form in lines very quickly. Both offence and defence is determined by a unit's VBU, which is kind of an all in one stat. In effect this means that once a unit takes damage, it becomes more vulnerable to further attacks and less able to deal out damage.

    Troop types are fairly simple. Skirmishers can evade troops slower than them on a 3+. This means that they evade heavy infantry on a 4+, which I don't like. I made a house rule that gives S a speed of 3 for the purposes of evasion. So they evade other foot non a 3+ and war bands on a 4+. Another change I made was introducing a minimum shooting attack of one dice, which I think is present in the full game. In rules as written, skirmishers can't shoot at each other due to heavy dice penalties. This results in a line of skirmishers kinda awkwardly standing at the start of the game. Warbands are impact units that lose a lot of power once they take losses and auto charge in certain circumstances. All light infantry don't take disorder when moving in difficult terrain, which doesn't sound like much but this is huge. Disorder doesn't stack up, instead you take additional losses. In many cases it's a death sentence for heavy infantry or cavalry to fight lights in terrain.

    One thing that bothers me is the portrayal of Roman maniples. In basic impetus, the line relief system is simulated by a large unit of Hastati and Principes, with the latter at the front. Large units take losses on the back unit first but combat and cohesion tests are made with the front unit, so the front is not affected by losses. The unit can't split though and it's just as unwieldy to use as a phalanx, which I'm not convinced by. Flexibility was the main advantage of the maniple system and they've tossed it out the window. I have some ideas for alternatives: Units of Roman FP can interpenetrate one another if directly in front or behind. This would allow for line relief yet allow more complex tactics with each unit keeping its individual flexibility. Units of Principes in the back line can move to face flanking cavalry for example. I'm not sure how powerful this will be, so some restrictions may be needed.

    I played my test games of Roman vs Pyrrhic with cardboard rectangles representing the eventual base sizes. Factions were fairly even with the Romans having a smaller more elite army and Pyrrhus leading a corps of powerful cavalry.

The Greek right (unreliable mercenaries) disintegrates but the romans, tired and bogged down in terrain, are unable to capitalize. On the left thureophoroi retreat into the cavalry, causing chaos. 

I very much recommend that you try out Basic Impetus 2 if you're interested in a mass-battle game with decisive combat that plays out in a timely manner. I will likely buy a copy of full Impetus in the future so I can use the command and control system.

Painted Persians

    This week I finished some Victrix Persians for my Seleucid army based as light foot for Impetus.

I ended my earlier indecision by going for 12cm frontage for my ancients basing. Not quite as flexible but will look more cohesive as a unit with the bonus of being easy to move on the table. 

    Went for some simple colours with some stripes and dots. Nowhere near as elaborate as the sources I’ve seen but I don’t have the patience for that kind of stuff. Decided to order shield transfers from Victrix which won’t come for a while (postal strike). Also ordered transfers for Tarentines, hoplites and immortals. 

Next on the lineup are a unit of 6 Samnites based the same way. I kinda wish that I had went with 8 figures for them but I’ll keep it six for consistency. I’ll make the switch when I rebase thureophoroi.

Rebasing ancients

Procrastination on multiple fronts

I haven’t posted on this blog for a while. In fact I should be working on a college paper right now, but alas. Ended up pivoting majors from history to geology. Still taking Hist next semester for personal interest reasons though.

    If the history 1101 course I’m (not) studying for right now didn’t one thing it’s rekindle my interest in historical gaming. So after a brief consideration of starting a Norman army, I’m rebasing my ancients. Initially I had the idea of changing to 25mm rounds for skirmish games but realized that planning an army for games I don’t play and don’t want to play is a bad idea.

    I had originally used 20mm squares for infantry and 25x50mm for cavalry. There is a decent saga presence in my area and I’ve attended a couple tournaments with my romans and Macedonians. It had a very “heroic” feel to it though and my historical interest lies more in mass battles. Thus the rebasing. I plan to use them mainly for Impetus and To the strongest, which seemed like they had a good balance of speed and tactical depth. I’m also attracted to multi-basing for the small dioramas that can be constructed and it seemed like a fun modelling opportunity. Plus I’ve lost track of how many models have broken from having to move so many or falling off shelves.

    With that settled the only issue was what sized bases I wanted to go for. My first idea was 40x40mm. I thought it looked good with more opportunities for mimicking formation while still being flexible for multiple systems

    Unfortunately adapting this to cavalry bases was challenging. Having a fluid formation with the base split into 3 pieces (120mm frontage) is very difficult, especially with light cavalry. Two solutions came to mind. 

1. Bite the bullet and do 120mm frontage

2. Try 60mm instead

    60mm has advantages for downsizing games and for ease of painting. Some rulesets prefer this as well. I could combine two 60mm bases to make the 120mm frontage needed for Impetus or line them up in column for display effects. In terms of figures per base this was my plan (following impetus measurements):

Heavy infantry (120x40): 12 figures

Light infantry (120x60): 6-8 figures

Skirmishers (120x30): 3-4

Cavalry (120x80): 3 for lights, 4 for heavy

    The only way to truly decide is to put them on cardstock bases and test them out. I'm planning to base my Persians this way before rebasing my Romans.

Hobby Recap - May

 Horus Heresy!

This will be the last hobby recap before I launch into new stuff. During May I decided what I needed in my life was yet another wargame to paint stuff for. So I started Horus Heresy.

In theory this would be different than 9th edition 40k with more granularity such as vehicle armour and reactions. In reality I just liked the fancy tanks. To start with I bought a box of mk 6 space marines. I would have preferred mk 3 but with new sculpts coming soon I didn’t want to risk it. I considered getting the box set (which people online just seem to love) but I considered it irresponsible with the amount of unpainted stuff I had. 

On a different note, I find it difficult to believe how games workshop considers this a good starting point for beginners. $365 is not an amount most people are willing to spend when starting the hobby. I understand it’s a good deal by their standards but it’s a huge initial investment that could get you started in three other game systems.

Anyways, I had bought some mk 4 marines earlier that year and needed a way to make them a similar height to the new sculpts. GW has seemed to scale up their mk 6 (I can’t blame them, they look great) but that does make cross-compatibility hard. After a quick internet search I ended up placing a ball of green stuff at the neck and hip joint as well as giving them a taller base. This has closed most of the gap and I’m quite happy with the result.

Left to right: mk 6, unconverted mk 7, converted mk 4

I also magnetized a contemptor dreadnought!

Here is the finished squad of mk 6 marines. I’m quite chuffed with these and I had a lot of fun painting them. I got to try some new techniques since they didn’t have to match the rest of my army.

 I did the armour almost entirely with the airbrush. I primed them black and hit them with a coat of maggrage blue air paint (I had to justify buying this), then mixed white with Vallejo Prussian blue and started building up the colour steadily, adding more and more white as I went and being careful to leave the recesses in shadow. At the end they were a bit too bright for my taste so I airbrushed drakonhoff nightshade into the recesses. I will do a more detailed tutorial in the future. 

This was also the first time I used green stuff world decal medium. In the past the ultramarine symbol always curled and lifted off of the shoulder. It never felt at one with the model. With a very light brush of decal medium and the rolling of a Cotton bud they were completely flush with the model. Just be careful not to add too much as it weakens the transfer. I highly recommend you try this stuff out.

The only other thing I painted in May was the long overdue Captain Sicarius. And old model but a good one.

Overall I didn’t get as much done in May but I learned some new techniques and furthered my painting skills.

Thanks for reading!

Hobby Recap - April

Space Marines!

 In April I put the 3d printing fiasco behind me and got a fair bit of painting done. After struggling to find motivation I took up an offer to paint at a friends place while hanging out. This proved to be a good strategy and I cleared out a fair bit of the 40k backlog.

The first thing I got painted was a unit of 5 sternguard (just in time for them to be moved into legends). I’m quite happy with how they turned out. I decided to go with the traditional white helmets and shoulder trim. The vanguard veterans I painted a few years back had gold helmets and silver trim. I’ll probably repaint them at some point to match if I have the time. I might post a painting tutorial for ultramarines at some point. I’ve switched to airbrush for the armour but I’ll cover my past methods as well.

Continuing with the first company theme I also painted 5 terminators and the captain from the old start collecting set. Like with the sternguard my other terminators were long ago painted silver in an effort to “change it up” but my tastes have changed. The sword on the captain was done by layering progressively lighter shades of red but I honestly can’t recall the exact method.

Terminators converted from dark vengeance set

Half-based captain

The next weekend I had the idea to paint three vehicles at once. I thought I should use my painting motivation while I still had it. The drop pod and land raider had been sitting unpainted since I bought them in 2019. I dreaded painting the vast swaths of blue for months until I realized I could use an airbrush. I also finished a predator I had bought from Craigslist the week before. I’m fairly happy with them but I skipped a few details like searchlights and the guy poking out of the land raider.

Predator destructor 

The hazard stripes are worth the effort

Land raider with unpainted searchlights

Some loose ends were tied up with 6 intercessors and a gravis captain. These are painted as red scorpions (my friends tell me they look neither red nor like scorpions). I got these from the dark imperium set I bought a while back. I didn’t want to mix firstborn and primaris in my army so I’m painting the them as a different chapter. Before you ask, there is no way I’m free handing the damn scorpion on their shoulders. 

Gravis captain leads the charge

Anyway, I only have one more recap to do before I move on to current stuff.

Thanks for reading - Parker

Group shot